SELTI is an organization that promotes tourism through literature. Each feature offers readers short stories, poetry, and book excerpts about real places to visit. Every story has a companion travel guide with links for more information. SELTI is the nation's premier site for the hot new genre of tourism fiction. Available now at Amazon: BLIND FATE, the first interactive tourism novel on Kindle. Visit the new SELTI at selti.org.

Below is an exclusive excerpt from the screenplay Beautiful Little Fools, a modern take on
Zelda Fitzgerald soon to be filmed in her hometown of Montgomery, Alabama.
The movie centers on a present day woman, Zelda Stone, who begins to learn about her namesake Zelda Fitzgerald after moving to Montgomery with her husband. Zelda Fitzgerald also appears as a character in the film through many historical flashbacks. One
of the places Zelda Stone starts with is the F. Scott and ZeldaFitzgeraldMuseum, located in the only
surviving home of the Fitzgerald family. Please learn more about this film in
the Tourism Guide after the excerpt. Plus, isn't it interesting to see the format of a screenplay before watching it on film?

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS

BY CARRIE STETT

Actress Grace McPhillips prepares to become Zelda Fitzgerald's modern
counterpart, Zelda Stone. Someone else will play Zelda Fitzgerald
in historical flashbacks throughout the movie. Who will play Zelda Fitzgerald?

INT. FITZGERALD MUSEUM – PRESENT DAY

Zelda enters. It's a small apartment filled with artifacts

from Scott and Zelda Fitzgeralds' lives -- paintings,

letters, books, and original 1930's furniture, all old and

slightly dusty. Large individual portraits of Zelda and F.

Scott stare out from the mantle.

Zelda's portrait in the museum.

GEORGE, 55, the scattered museum keeper, greets Zelda

enthusiastically.

GEORGE

Welcome to the Museum.

ZELDA

Thanks.

Zelda surveys the room.

GEORGE

Scott and Zelda lived in this building in 1931 and 32. It

has since been made into separate apartments,

but this was their actual dining room.

Zelda admires a set of realistic hand-painted paper dolls on

the wall depicting Zelda, Scott and their daughter Scottie

in their undergarments, with changes of clothes next to

them.

Zelda's paper dolls on display in the museum.

GEORGE (CONT’D)

Zelda painted lots of paper dolls.

It was part of her therapy.

ZELDA

They're striking.

GEORGE

Artist, writer, ballerina... She had so much talent.

All she ever wanted was to make a name for herself.

And she did.

(beat)

I'm doing my dissertation on Scott and Zelda.

They had such fascinating lives.

(beat)

Sorry, I'm rambling. It's refreshing to have a visitor.

This photograph of Zelda was taken in the same
room where it is now on display in the museum.
She used this photograph for the cover of her
novel Save Me the Waltz.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's portrait in the museum.
Zelda's dolls are to the right of the lamp.

As a board member of the real
museum in the scene above, you can imagine how excited I am to know that a movie will be filmed
inside our museum. How is that going to impact tourism to our city? These days,
tourism revenues are tough to come by for cash-strapped states and cities, and
that has led to some creative ways to attract visitors.

If having a scene filmed inside a real tourism attraction isn't enough, there might be an even more stunning draw for
tourism in this movie because Sterling Rock Productions, the movie’s producer,
is considering incorporating a tourism commercial about the many real life attractions in the movie—a commercial to be shown inside the movie (probably at the end with the real
actors and actresses directly inviting viewers to come visit the places). Have you ever seen that in a movie? Wouldn’t
it be fun to go visit the real places you just watched in a movie, and who better to
invite you than the lead stars in the movie? The commercial would direct viewers to visit a special website where they could follow tourism links to all the places in the movie. The links would show photos, provide directions, and list ticket prices and other information, such as hours of operation.

Naturally, all of us at the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum are very excited about this, but once the movie comes out, isn’t it possible that
many more movies in the near future set in different places will follow the
same model? And how will that affect national tourism revenues and eventually the national economy, which is 70% driven by consumer spending? We are proud to
be a part of this innovation in tourism marketing. No amount of generic tourism commercial formatting could compete with the artistic emotional appeal of a film,
so this will open up a whole new level of connecting with the films and places for artistic
moviegoers, much like the tourism novels featured on this wesbite. Of course, showing fans how to physically connect with their favorite movies is going to generate some much higher revenues for film producers and their investors as well. Follow the links below to learn more about the museum and the
movie.

About Me

I am the founder of SELTI and author of Blind Fate, the first tourism novel in the world with an interactive travel guide inside the book (order here). Blind Fate has live links in the book that take readers instantly to the websites of the real tourism places found in the story--all with one click.
Blind Fate was featured in USA Today here.
Also, please browse the SELTI features for online tourism guides to many Southern books. Email me at literarytourism@aol.com or SELTI Executive Director Kathryn Lang at kathrynlang@kathrynlang.com.
For a more detailed explanation of SELTI, please visit the introduction page at: Southeastern Literary Tourism Initiative.